CAREER DEVELOPMENT: How to Keep Your Job; Follow these Ten Tips

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If you want to stay employed and be at your career best, you must learn from mistakes, overcome challenges, mitigate your weaknesses, and most importantly, “play off your innate strengths, talents and skills.” You must stay closely in tune to your career performance and objective. You must know what’s going on in your organization and have a job you feel is worthwhile doing and is contributing to the profitability of the organization. You must stay informed, engaged, open to change, and determined to make a positive impact on those around you.

Keeping the above in mind, follow these ten tips.

1. To experience the best of your career life means “seizing opportunities” that best fit your strengths and talents as they arise. Look for opportunities to volunteer where you can perform at your best and pick your projects wisely.

2. Understand the fact that job security is dead, jobs are volatile and updating your skills and gaining new experience is what will keep you marketable and employed.

3. Cultivate and maintain a winning attitude. Winners maintain an optimistic and “realistic outlook” as they move toward their career goals. The key to understanding personal career motivation is in knowing what energizes you… what kinds of activities, people, and situations are personally stimulating and fulfilling to you on the job?

4. Live by positive values. To succeed over the long term, you must know what’s right and wrong, and you must use these standards of behavior every day to keep your career on track.

5. No pain, no gain. Winners face career obstacles directly and turn the pain of “hard and smart” work into the gain realized in a successful career.

6. Don’t forget the networking. Networking inside your organization can go a long way toward keeping you informed. Information will form your career. Are you aware that only a small percentage of the available jobs are actually advertised? It is critical to maintain your own network, so that you can hear about these unadvertised opportunities and make your move to capitalize on this information.

7. Take stock of your strengths and the types of tasks you like to do and can do well. Look for important, visible ways to use and build on your strengths within the organization and that will get you recognized for a job well done. Know what profits and benefit’s your roles generate for your organization and make sure the organization knows the value of your contributions.

8. People who get ahead in their careers don't sit back waiting for the boss to think of ideas. You've got to take a risk and initiate new and innovative ideas. Not taking a risk to be innovative is also a risk. To stay employed, take smart risks and create value.

9. Look for opportunities where you can leverage what you do well. It's a great way to increase your job knowledge, satisfaction and responsibility, and your job security can actually increase when you embrace change as it occurs. Organizations are always looking for people to step up to the challenge and take on new things.

10. Look at your performance through your supervisor's eyes. If I were my boss, ask yourself, would I keep me? Your boss most likely wants self-reliant individuals who take charge of their careers and are continually updating their skills and experiences, are, engaged, resilient, future-focused, self-aware, driven by values, flexible and dedicated to lifelong learning. Your boss wants individuals who detect and solve problems. Are you that person?

Bonus Tip: Work every day as if you are an entrepreneur and own the company.


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You MAY reprint the information contained in this article as long as no portion of the contents are modified and it used “exclusively” within your organization and credit is given to Ingbretsen Consulting. Please contact for republication.

About Ingbretsen Consulting LLC:
Coach and author Roger Ingbretsen is a certified executive coach and organizational developer, providing organizational and career guidance to professionals, managers, supervisors and all individuals looking for "real world" career development and business information. His entrepreneurial approach will help you learn how to plan, lead and succeed in your career. Roger is the creator of the “Leadership Development Coaching Experience©” and author of the personal development reference eBooks, “Plan Your Career Now: The Survival Guide for the American Workplace” and “Master Your Career: Proven Strategies for Career Success©.” To know more and claim dozens of Rogers free articles go to www.ingbretsen.com or call 509 999 7008.

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